Online Poker

It's half way through February already. Summer is nearly over, or Winter for those of you in the northern hemisphere, and the 2006 is flying past as quickly as 2005 did.

I thought it was time I gave a Poker.com update on the blog.

Tomorrow we move our game servers onto machines in the Kahnawake Gaming Commission facility as a part of our gaming license terms.
There'll be a 2-4 hour downtime to allow us to complete this move and to the outsider this probably just seems like a minor annoyance, not worth a second look. But to us here at Poker.com it has involved A LOT of work and preparation. Our new server setup will allow us to really grow the site and makes a lot of our day to day work quicker and easier. We've been waiting months for this move! C'mon at least get a little excited with me!

Once we are sure the game environment is stable on the new servers, a few days after the move we are planning to release the next Poker.com software upgrade - Version 2.7.

Poker.com 2.7 introduces a lot of invisible backend & system changes that players will not really notice too much, but there are also some cool features that players have been looking forward to.

Here's a brief rundown of some new features that are a part of 2.7.

• New Player Admin look and functionality
• Live Chat Support introduced for all real money players
• Sit & Go levels run by number of hands or time. (10 hands per level)
• Bonuses can be released incrementally instead of just in a lump sum
• Custom Backgrounds can be used for any tournament or cash game
• New WSOP Satellite table backgrounds
• New WPT Satellite Table Backgrounds
• New Heads Up Tables & Backgrounds
• New 6 handed table setup
• New accolades for WSOP, WPT, BPT & other tournies
  
• Poker.com Tournament XML Feed
• Improved payment fraud detection & security features
• Ability to delete deposit method details from cashier
• Comp Point store released, but may not yet be functional due to some planned changes to the comp points system. At the least you will be able to see the items that will be available, but players may not be able to claim them yet.
  
  

It should be a good update, but the one we are really looking forward to is Poker.com Version 3.0. Work has started on some of the features to be included in 3.0, the main new additions being much better multi-table functionality and a facelift for the lobby.

Everything is still in development and nothing is finalised yet, but our multi-table options are looking pretty good. It's looking like there'll be a variety of multi-tabling options to allow our players to compete at more than one poker table, or even some poker tables and a video poker or blackjack screen simultaneously, either via multiple windows or a funky full screen interface.

We'll also be tying up the stars accolades to every player's lifetime comp point balance and rewarding players that have already accumulated the stars accolades with a special accolade as a part of our first birthday celebration.

Yes the Poker.com software officially turned one year old this month and we had a small staff party last Friday night. But seeing as we didn't really fire things up until March 2005, March is going to be our birthday month. Look out for some new birthday promotions & announcements soon.

And please keep the suggestions coming. A lot of our changes & upgrades are due to player feedback. At Poker.com we'll always listen to our players as we strive to become the most enjoyable place to play poker online.

Kris @ Poker.com